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By admin 2019-02-04

SIMA on budget:The pension scheme for the workers in the unorganized sector announced in the Interim Budget 2019-20 would largely benefit the weavers of handlooms and powerlooms, The Southern India Mills’ Association (SIMA) has said. The Pradhan Mantri Shram-Yogi Maandhan would also benefit workers of several small, micro units from other segments of the textile industry.The Pradhan Mantri Shram-Yogi Maandhan scheme is for the unorganised sector workers with monthly income up to ₹15,000. “This pension yojana shall provide them an assured monthly pension of ₹3,000 from the age of 60 years on a monthly contribution of a small affordable amount during their working age,” finance minister Piyush Goyal said in his budget speech.An unorganised sector worker joining pension yojana at the age of 29 years will have to contribute only ₹100 per month till the age of 60 years. A worker joining the pension yojana at 18 years, will have to contribute as little as ₹55 per month only. The Government will deposit equal matching share in the pension account of the worker every month.It is expected that at least 10 crore labourers and workers in the unorganised sector will avail the benefit of the scheme within the next five years making it one of the largest pension schemes of the world. The government has allocated a sum of ₹500 crore for the scheme, which will be implemented from the current year.“The announcement of ₹6,000 per year for the farmers having below two hectares of land under Prathan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi programme with effect from December 1, 2018 would benefit millions of cotton farmers,” SIMA chairman P Nataraj said in a press release.Nataraj also welcomed the decision of doubling the income tax exemption limit from ₹2.5 lakh per annum to ₹5.00 lakh per annum apart from enhancing the standard deduction limit from ₹40,000 to ₹50,000, as the same would benefit several lakh middle class employees of the textile industry.He stated that the substantial reduction in the budget allocation for RoSL and Technology Upgradation Fund (A-TUFS) benefits would have serious impact on the textile industry. The RoSL budget allocation has been reduced to ₹1,000 crores from the last year’s budget allocation of ₹2,164 crore as against the revised estimate of ₹3,664 crore for the same year. The A-TUFS allocation has been reduced to ₹700 crore from the previous year’s budget allocation of ₹2,300 crore.He added that the backlog in the A-TUFS would be over ₹2,000 crore as over 3,000 projects that got implemented are yet to receive the subsidy due to the complicated guidelines of A-TUFS. He hoped that the government would allocate necessary funds soon and the procedural issues are sorted out. (RKS)